Youth set sites on a media melange

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Young Australians are turning their media choices into a "virtual media playground" in which their desire to juggle even more is growing.

According to a new study of more than 7000 15-24-year-olds, the internet is taking up more of their interest and time but they are not giving anything else up.

"It really is media fragmentation gone wild," said Wesley Hill, a director at research firm AMR Interactive, which conducted the survey online. "It's an almost insatiable desire to consume and be consumed."

The results show the internet now ranks only second to watching TV as a daily activity.

But unlike older age brackets, 15-24-year-olds are not just using the internet for information, though 58 per cent say they do use it for study and research.

"By far the largest percentage of time is used for messaging friends and in chat rooms, all of which happens whilst they are listening to music radio stations like Nova," said Mr Hill.

"It's also interesting to note that out of the top 11 websites visited, excluding search engines, more than half were media-related, such as movies, music, news, TV and magazine sites.

The most popular sites for this group are search engines (with 64per cent saying they use them), music (48 per cent), and news, online banking, games, movie and educational sites (all between 30 and 34 per cent).